After much prayer I have finally concluded to make another effort at setting forth some incidents of my life — incidents that have been of great importance to me, and will be to those directly or indirectly touched by them. I hope that each one reading these incidents will read carefully this foreword, as it contains a very useful key to the book; for as soon as I ventured out from the mission work in Cincinnati, where I had spent several years, I began to realize that mine was not a feather-bed vocation. God had called me to labor among the poorest of people, but few of whom ever entered the church. So, from the start, mine was a life entirely of faith. I never took up an offering for myself, nor asked anyone else to, nor made my wants known, only to God.

-G C Bevington